So I watched a let's play of the campaign so I can't really make any firm observations on it. Although I played a ton of the Beta and that was amazing, so I'm assuming that the multiplayer is at least pretty fantastic.

But it looked amazing; the enemies seemed like they got a lot of work put in to making them more interesting and a bit more difficult to compensate for the squad mechanics.

So obviously those are all pretty worthless observations since I didn't actually play, but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the gameplay of it all? How did the campaign feel? how's the multiplayer? Give me all the juicy details, I'm going into halo withdrawals.

Overall I think I enjoyed the campaign greatly, certainly more than 2, Reach, and probably 4 on first blush. Going through it solo Legendary took some getting used to, because it's brutal in ways that the previous games were not—you're going to have to rely on your allies to revive you, and in general working through the limitations (and strengths) of the AI system. I still miss my marines, though.

The boss battles are just kind of gratuitous after a while, even though I see what they were trying to go for. They really should have introduced additional mechanics instead of just varying the number and setting for the fights.

The one thing I really don't like is the blurring effect when you get hit by explosions. Makes it damn hard to see what I'm shooting at, and I feel helpless in a really frustrating way. Luckily it's overall not a common occurrence.